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Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

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Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#91

Post by kristofferR »

raytopia wrote: post #26
CM30 wrote: post #7

Fortunately there is a fan run project that's working on recreating the online services for these consoles/games, in the same way that Wiimmfi has gotten the DS and Wii's multiplayer functionality up and running. See the Pretendo project here: https://pretendo.network/ It's not exactly feature perfect yet, but 2024 gives them time to fix up many of the features they haven't gotten working, and hopefully expand suppor…

I know it's not realistic but it'd be cool if pretendo made a e-shop replacement.

https://hshop.erista.me/ is basically that, it contains nearly all 3DS abandonware.

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#92

Post by ibejoeb »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #58
ibejoeb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I don't think I agree with the philosophy of it, even if the outcome is good for consumers. For one, just because something is not available for purchase does not mean that the creator is not deprived of the would-be revenue. An existing owner of a copy of the media should have access to it for the duration, but I can't get to why it should become freely shareable. Secondly, that puts an unfair burden on creator…

> An existing owner of a copy of the media should have access to it for the duration, but I can't get to why it should become freely shareable. Because copyright laws (in the US at least) are (supposed to) provide to creators a limited time monopoly on their work in order to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Getting the right to squat on a piece of art that you claimed copyright over but not doing…

I'm just describing a potential disincentive. It's not a straw man.

That's why the notion of expiring copyright works out. I didn't suggest removing that. And sure, there's plenty of room in between there. What would call for, then? If there is any demand, the owner of the work needs to front the expense to fulfill it, otherwise lose the rights to the work? There are lots of ways for this to go wrong.

Anyway, copyright is already a mess, and it will only get worse over the next decade. It's worth talking about it.

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#93

Post by deergomoo »

This will not help a jot with online play, but it’s worth noting that it’s very very easy to softmod any model of 3DS: https://3ds.hacks.guide/

The 3DS has a fantastic library but a good chunk of it is very difficult to obtain these days—either because it was only available digitally, or because prices for used physical copies are unreasonable.

It’s sad that Nintendo don’t give a shit about preservation past their ability to sell old games over and over, but if I can no longer give the creator money for a game I’m of the opinion that largely absolves any immorality of piracy.

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#94

Post by josephcsible »

ibejoeb wrote: post #34
derstander wrote: post #16

It’ll never happen, but I think codifying a concept similar to “abandonware” in law would be a huge step forward. If a person can’t buy or rent a piece of media, then it should be able to be freely shared. Maybe add a short time-out period in case there are momentary hiccups with a creator. Make it apply not just to videogames, but books, movies, music, etc. After all, if you can’t buy it, you’re not depriving the cr…

Hmm. I don't think I agree with the philosophy of it, even if the outcome is good for consumers. For one, just because something is not available for purchase does not mean that the creator is not deprived of the would-be revenue. An existing owner of a copy of the media should have access to it for the duration, but I can't get to why it should become freely shareable. Secondly, that puts an unfair burden on creator…

> If I do a run of of my book, and it sells out, I don't think it becomes open season on duplicating it digitally

Nobody is asking for that. We only want it to become open season on duplicating it digitally if you choose not to do any further runs of it.

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#95

Post by wnoise »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #36
derstander wrote: post #16

It’ll never happen, but I think codifying a concept similar to “abandonware” in law would be a huge step forward. If a person can’t buy or rent a piece of media, then it should be able to be freely shared. Maybe add a short time-out period in case there are momentary hiccups with a creator. Make it apply not just to videogames, but books, movies, music, etc. After all, if you can’t buy it, you’re not depriving the cr…

I don't know if this would work. Right now, Winnie the Pooh has gone public domain, and if you've seen the reaction to "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" or a new video game called "Winnie's Hole"... most people really, really do not like that Winnie the Pooh is being expanded in the horror direction. Some are even calling for copyright to be eternal because the public is showing that it cannot handle public domain r…

> most people really, really do not like that Winnie the Pooh is being expanded in the horror direction.

Fascinating. I have not actually seen that reaction in my filter bubble. Much the opposite, actually.

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#96

Post by rigrassm »

bakugo wrote: post #62
godman_8 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! That's why I can still play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive...oh wait, nvm.

You actually still can, just not on official servers. You don't have to break your device's or the game's security to connect to a third party server, the game just lets you. Unfortunately this is mostly a thing of the past, and most online games released in the past 5 years are completely unplayable without the central servers.

I really love how Velan Studios handled the shutting down of their game Knockout City.

1) They announced the official servers would be shut down months ahead of time with an exact date[0].

2) In that same announcement they also announced that they would be releasing a private server/client build before the shut down happened that would allow people to continue to play using privately hosted servers.

They delivered on the promise to release a private server build[1] and by the time the official servers were shut down, the community had already built out a hosted server solution complete with a custom launcher to support easily connecting to different servers.

Because Velan took the time to plan the games shut down properly and went the extra mile to produce one last release that included everything needed to run the backend, players were able to continue playing the game completely whenever they want.

I really hope that other game studios take similar paths in the future.

Note: On mobile, apologies for any grammar

[0] - https://www.knockoutcity.com/updates/knockout-city-special-a... [1] - https://www.knockoutcity.com/updates/knockout-city-private-h...

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#97

Post by RockRobotRock »

linkpuff wrote: post #35
raytopia wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's not realistic but it'd be cool if pretendo made a e-shop replacement.

It is technically possible, but it will only hold homebrew at best, due to licensing nightmares. They published a video recently of a PoC of it happening in their discord I think this could replace the likes of Universal Updater (3DS's main homebrew browser) if it gets to public. Not that UU is bad, it just lacks the tiny eshop dudes :)

You can just do illegal things and not give a shit.

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#98

Post by mrguyorama »

RajT88 wrote: post #88
_aavaa_ wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they've got that covered by now selling you non-transferable licenses to games instead, so the second-hand market simply can't exist anymore...

That is one of the major reasons the game industry wants to push consumers to all-digital. Another reason is that costs are far lower with digital distribution as is time to market.

Another reason is that retail traditionally took like 30% but if you buy off of PSN or the eShop, now the game company gets that sweet sweet free money, while actual businesses normal human beings can run can't function anymore.

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#99

Post by hirako2000 »

cultureswitch wrote: post #33

I think having pure data IP protected by copyright should require said IP to be uploaded to a national database in each country. After the copyright elapses, everyone can simply download from that database. Sure, there are a lot of works to copyright every year. That's a lot of data. But we need to save all of that somewhere, so it might as well be some place that can't go bankrupt.

That already got sorted and worked for books, at least in the UK.

The British (National) Library held and still holds the duty to acquire in the form of legal deposit, at least one print of each book published in the UK.

So every single book published gets stored in there, and has been since its inception 50 years ago.

It gathers 170–200 millions unique items, and counting.

With free access to anybody, able to physically access the library. It has a budget of less than £150 million.

I bet implementing an archive of digital content would be a cheaper and despite more technologically challenging would remain do-able with a reasonable number of techies.

Oh isn't it what the Internet Archive is, and even more? Is that not what they've attempted to fulfill for a while now and the primary reason they haven't accomplish it is due to a legal war with large IP distributors and their armies of top paid laywers shaping the interpretation of copyright legislations?

Re: Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

#100

Post by spicybright »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #97
linkpuff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is technically possible, but it will only hold homebrew at best, due to licensing nightmares. They published a video recently of a PoC of it happening in their discord I think this could replace the likes of Universal Updater (3DS's main homebrew browser) if it gets to public. Not that UU is bad, it just lacks the tiny eshop dudes :)

You can just do illegal things and not give a shit.

While for sure yes, and it could probably work for a while, Nintendo is notoriously trigger happy with shutting down fan projects.

Fan games using their IP are the main targets, but emulation and rom distribution is on their radar too.

Ex. Dophin emulator for gamecube/wii has to fight tooth and nail against nintendo to be able to stay up.

Even with courts agreeing nintendo can't do anything, they still try every so often to take legal action against the project. Most recently trying to shutdown offering the emulator on the steam deck.

I can't say for sure, but I imagine that has an effect on how many people are willing to develop around nintendo products.

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